Resources
The CDQ Blog
Insights on business partner data quality, data sharing and agentic AI — practical thinking from the CDQ team.
FeaturedWhy AI Fails Without Trusted Data
AI amplifies whatever data it receives. Without trusted, governed, continuously cleansed business partner data, automation spreads errors at scale instead of fixing them.
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One Team, One Beat, One Success
CDQ's Malta offsite brought the whole team together to align on a shared vision for 2026, building trust, momentum, and cross-team connection under one theme: one team, one beat, one success.
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Why data cleansing fails without the right preparation
Data cleansing is often treated as a one-time project, but its success depends primarily on preparation. Without addressing data fragmentation, inconsistencies, and governance first, cleansing only delivers temporary results.
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Why the CDQ Data Sharing Community matters: insights from the Cologne workshop
Members of the CDQ Data Sharing Community met in Cologne for two days of practical exchange, showing why this network of companies solving shared master data challenges is one of CDQ's most valuable assets.
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The Power of "Data Sharing" in a Fragile Global Supply Chain
In volatile global supply chains, resilience depends less on owning data than on sharing trusted, up-to-date business partner data. CDQ's All Time Right and Data Sharing Community turn accuracy into a collective asset.
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From Ideas to Everyday Practice: Reflections from a Data Management Conference in Amsterdam
A CDQ reflection on a European data management conference in Amsterdam: why data governance succeeds or fails on human factors, a Covestro customer example, and a pragmatic take on AI as an accelerator built on trusted data.
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Stepping out of silo thinking: Henkel's data quality story
Henkel's master data experts Sandra Feisel and Stefanie Kraft share how a 150-year-old global leader tackled duplicates, silos, and fraud risk with a service-oriented, API-driven approach to data quality.
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The e-invoicing reality: the gateway is ready, but is your data?
As the EU mandates structured e-invoicing by 2030, the real bottleneck is not technology but trusted supplier master data — clean VAT IDs, legal names, and EN 16931 alignment that prevent invoice rejections and compliance failures.
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The finalists for the CDQ Good Practice Award 2025 are here!
CDQ announces the four finalists of the Good Practice Award 2025 — Kühne+Nagel, Bosch, Merck, and thyssenkrupp — with Kühne+Nagel taking the win at the Hamburg finals.
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A practical guide to managing regulatory compliance in business partner relationships
A practical breakdown of regulatory compliance in business partner relationships — general compliance, sanctions and watchlists, continuous monitoring, and a risk-based approach — with guidance on building resilient, automated processes.
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How Henkel is turning master data quality into a service
In a DSAG Digital gesagt podcast episode, Henkel's Stefanie Kraft and Sandra Feisel explain how they turned master data quality into a centralized, cloud-based service on SAP BTP — with CDQ helping cut duplicates and enrich records in real time.
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Clarity, trust and autonomy for remote Dev Teams
How CDQ's remote-first engineering teams use Swarmia to gain clarity without control - fueling autonomy, better conversations, and a healthier balance of time spent on product development.
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A tribute to the unsung heroes: why master data professionals deserve a break
A tribute to the master data professionals who keep organizations running on clean, reliable data — and why, with CDQ All Time Right, their work no longer has to be a daily firefight.
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Eine Deutschland AG der Daten: the time is now
CDQ's Prof. Dr.-Ing. Boris Otto and Dr. Sebastian Muschter make the case in the FAZ for "Eine Deutschland AG der Daten" - a coordinated, cross-industry data ecosystem to keep Germany and Europe competitive in the global AI race.
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Turning compliance challenges into manageable workflows
CDQ AML Guard turns fast-moving compliance challenges into manageable, automated workflows: real-time business-partner monitoring, centralized case management, and a transparent audit trail that unites compliance and MDM teams.
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Master Data Management meets AI: work smarter, not harder
CDQ's year-long research identifies 11 archetypes where AI supercharges master data management - from data modeling and cleansing to matching, governance, and discovery.
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How AI and MDM work together to drive business success
AI is only as brilliant as the data it learns from — which is why Master Data Management is the foundation for AI success. A look at how AI enhances MDM, how MDM powers AI, and best practices for combining them.
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Trust, automation, and the future of master data management
CDQ CTO Kai Hüner on why trusted data and automation are inseparable for the future of master data management, and how the CDQ and SAP MDG partnership makes reliable, automated MDM accessible.
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Managing data in the age of AI: F.A.Z. podcast
In an era where artificial intelligence and machine learning drive innovation, the importance of robust data management has never been clearer. Christine Legner joins the F.A.Z. AI Podcast to discuss why intelligent data management is essential for AI.
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The value of automation in MDM: podcast CDQ & SAP
A SAP Let's Talk Data podcast episode with Kai Hüner (CDQ) and Andreas Seifried (SAP) on how automation and trusted, high-quality data transform Master Data Management.
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Navigating the compliance maze: why real-time monitoring is essential
Compliance checks at onboarding are no longer enough. Learn why continuous, real-time monitoring of business partners, sanctions lists, and regulatory updates is now essential to avoid fines and protect your reputation.
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Efficient mass-enrichment of business partner data in SAP MDG
CDQ's partnership with SAP delivers a mass-enrichment feature for bulk loading, validating, and enriching business partner data in SAP MDG—improving data quality while cutting manual effort at scale.
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AXA, Bosch and Fiege have made it into the final round!
We are happy to announce the three finalists of the CDQ Good Practice Award 2024: AXA, Bosch and Fiege, whose data excellence cases were honored at the Munich finals.
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Unlocking the power of Data Sharing: the CDQ approach
How CDQ's Data Sharing Platform turns data-quality, compliance, and security challenges into opportunities, enabling secure, collaborative business-partner data sharing across trusted networks.
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Global business insights with automated trusted data access
CDQ offers automated access to local, regional, and global business registers, letting companies validate and enrich business partner master data across over 200 countries and territories.
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Real-time data management: why accurate business partner data can't wait
Business Partner Master Data isn't a one-time cleansing job but an ongoing process. Learn how poor master data creates risk and how CDQ's Data Mirror and Business Partner Update Management keep it accurate in real time.
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Smart, safe, and always a step ahead: the PUMA way to data governance
At the CDQ Data Sharing Community Workshop, PUMA's Jonas Gubo shared how the ARGOS tool and CDQ data quality services power a pragmatic, agile approach to business partner data governance.
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From e-bikes to e-mail guards: CDQ Data Sharing Community Workshop highlights
A recap of the two-day CDQ Data Sharing Community Workshop in Düsseldorf, where 60 attendees explored data quality, product updates like Email Domain Guard and AML Guard, and the community's shared commitment to data excellence.
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Why collaborative location management is the future (and why AI isn't the answer)
AI can clean up messy data, but it can't create trusted location data or bring partners together on standards. Here's why collaborative location management—not AI—is the future.
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Benefits of MDM automation: value beyond numbers
Beyond faster processing and better compliance, master data automation delivers intangible value—from happier employees and loyal customers to a smaller carbon footprint and AI readiness.
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MDM automation: business partner data management booster
How automating business partner master data — creation, VAT ID verification, bank account validation, and change management — cuts effort and unlocks five- to seven-digit savings, with real-world examples from Tetra Pak, Schwarz IT, Covestro, and Bayer.
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On the way to SAP S/4HANA: migration scenarios supported by Data Quality
Three typical transition scenarios for moving to SAP S/4HANA — greenfield, hybrid, and system conversion — all require high-quality business partner master data, and how CDQ supports each.
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CDQ and SAP: the master data automation dream team
In partnership with SAP, CDQ advances master data automation for business partners, combining cutting-edge technology and trusted data natively embedded in SAP MDG.
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SNP partners with CDQ to increase focus on data quality
SNP has signed a partnership agreement with data quality specialist CDQ AG, integrating CDQ's business partner data quality into its CrystalBridge suite.
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CDQ AML Guard: How-to Guide
A step-by-step how-to on screening business partner data with CDQ AML Guard — from logging in and creating a sanction and watchlist configuration to testing it and screening via the RESTful API.
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Third party risk management: why you need to know your business partner
Governments and regulators require businesses to verify the identity and legitimacy of their partners through KYC/AML processes. Here is what the statistics reveal and how CDQ's AML Guard streamlines third party risk management.
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Better data - unchanged process: Data Quality made easy
A look at the "2nd time right" approach to master data quality: instead of changing your data creation processes, detect and correct data automatically after creation for improved quality at high speed.
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Power of community: become a data hero too!
Highlights from the CDQ Data Sharing Community workshop in Frankfurt: 74 participants, customer stories from Schwarz IT, Voith and Henkel, and CDQ product updates.
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Data Mesh and the case of Data Sharing
Data mesh is a distributed architecture for managing and analyzing large-scale data across domains. This article explores its challenges and how it aligns with CDQ's data sharing philosophy.
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Boost Data Quality for SAP S/4HANA: The Role of Customer Vendor Integration (SAP CVI)
Discover how Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) streamlines your SAP S/4HANA migration and ensures high-quality data for a seamless transition.
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Where remote-first means people-first: how we live CDQ values in our daily work
CDQ's HR team explains how a remote-only company keeps people first — through talent-focused hiring, structured onboarding, flexible work, and in-person gatherings that build real connection across Europe.
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Augmenting business partners into trusted Golden Records
A golden record is the definitive, trustworthy representation of a business partner. Learn why it matters and how CDQ automates augmenting scattered data into one unified, reliable record.
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SAP S/4HANA with plug-and-play CDQ integration
A step-by-step guide to setting up CDQ as a provider of trusted business partner data in SAP MDG on S/4HANA, using the Data Provider Integration (DPI) feature now available across on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud editions.
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Anti money laundering: is your business partner master data your ally?
High-quality customer and vendor master data is a strategic ally for Anti-Money Laundering compliance — enabling trustworthy relationships, accurate risk profiling, transaction monitoring, and cleaner regulatory reporting.
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Local needs, global excellence: Tetra Pak best practice approach
How Tetra Pak built a governance-first, collaborative approach to master data management with CDQ—implementing over 2000 country-specific validation rules in 12 months and bridging local and global requirements.
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Business partners: the most crucial master data domain in any successful business
Among the master data domains, the business partner domain stands out as the most crucial — orchestrating sales, procurement, and logistics while underpinning compliance, data quality, scalability, and growth.
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Trust in shared data: quantifying the benefits of Data Sharing
CDQ quantifies the tangible benefits of sharing business partner data — cutting data life cycle costs by around 40%, plus gains in process efficiency, decision quality and risk reduction.
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CDQ integration in SAP MDG: How-to guide
A step-by-step how-to guide for setting up CDQ as a provider of trusted business partner data in SAP Master Data Governance (MDG), cloud edition, covering CDQ service configuration and connecting the two systems.
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SAP Master Data Integration
Reliable information about customers, products, employees, and suppliers is crucial to make the most of your SAP environment. See how the CDQ and SAP MDG integration brings trusted business partner data into SAP.
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Trusted Business Partner Data in the Age of AI
Trusted business partner data on customers and suppliers is the backbone of enterprise success, and in an AI-driven world its source, accuracy, and human-verified integrity matter more than ever.
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Deutsche Bahn, Huawei and Tetra Pak have made it into the final round of CDQ's Good Practice Award 2023!
We are happy to announce the three finalists of the CDQ Good Practice Award 2023: Deutsche Bahn, Huawei, and Tetra Pak.
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Data sharing at its finest: CDQ Data Sharing Community
A recap of the CDQ Data Sharing Community workshop in Düsseldorf, where 90 participants explored master data management through use cases from Rheinmetall, Tetra Pak, Covestro, Siemens, Dovista, and Bayer.
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Efficient payment fraud prevention with crowd intelligence
Payment fraud methods keep evolving, making manual vendor verification too slow and costly. Learn how CDQ's crowd-intelligence Bank Trust Score, built on shared and anonymized transaction data, helps prevent B2B payment fraud.
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Even more data quality rules available out-of-the-box
CDQ expanded its out-of-the-box data quality rules by over 310 in eight months, driven by its Data Sharing Community and user groups, with new country-specific and tax-number coverage.
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Good data vs. bad data: welcome to Data-City
Welcome to Data-City, where villains like Data Joker and Data Bane wreak havoc on your master data. A look at the real-world impact of poor data quality across O2C, procurement, sales, finance and compliance—and how CDQ customers fight back.
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Business and Tax Identifiers: Empowering Interoperability and Compliance
How verifying business and tax identifiers - format, checkdigit, consistency, existence, qualification and more - safeguards data quality, compliance and interoperability across business ecosystems.
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CDQ Validate! your business partner data: how-to guide
A quick how-to guide on validating business partner data with the CDQ Cloud Suite, using a standard ruleset of more than 2,100 data quality rules to detect common data issues.
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Cherries rocking it in Greece at the CDQ Summer Event
CDQ's globally distributed team gathered in Thessaloniki, Greece for its annual summer event — three-plus days of culture workshops, a city tour, a beach raft-building challenge, and quality time together.
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Data Enrichment for Enriched Business Partnerships
Data enrichment keeps business partner data accurate, up-to-date, and valuable for decision-making. A look at CDQ's business partner enrichment, address cleansing, and Data Curation API capabilities.
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The hidden costs of duplicate business partner records
Duplicate business partner records carry hidden costs across compliance, reporting, and data operations. This article breaks down the impact, the matching challenges, and how to quantify and address the expense of duplicates.
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Why compliance is necessary and how data quality can help
Joint forces of it.mds and CDQ solutions can automate and simplify your master data input process, ensuring the high data quality and consistency that compliance demands.
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Streamlining SAP MDG and S/4HANA Integration
A step-by-step technical guide to directly integrating SAP MDG, cloud edition with S/4HANA via SOAP web services, and activating CDQ trusted data sources for high-quality Business Partner data.
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Cherry picking with Tetra Pak: how data provider integration can turn the tables
High-quality data in combination with process-related solutions fueled Tetra Pak to refine their systems and processes for optimal data management.
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Stronger together: Sharing knowledge for better data
Expert and research communities like the Competence Center Corporate Data Quality help data leaders stay current, learn from peers, and improve data quality together.
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Are you a data quality champion or a data quality chump?
Data quality benchmarking helps organizations spot gaps in their processes and compare their business partner data quality against industry peers — the difference between being a data quality champion or a chump.
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AML 6: Prepare for audit-proof Business Partner checks
Money laundering costs the world up to $2 trillion a year. Here's the background, importance, and implications of business partner checks in the AML context, plus how audits tie into risk analysis.
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Touchless master data experience at Sartorius
How Sartorius automated customer master data creation for its rapidly growing e-shop — combining SAP MDG workflows with CDQ duplicate check and address validation to create ~70% of customers with minimal manual intervention.
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Stay Clean for SAP Business Partners: Fix it before it costs you money
Companies constantly move, rename, and close, making SAP business partner data hard to keep accurate at global scale. Here's why proactive, automated fixes beat costly manual maintenance.
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Unleashing the power of external data - smartly and efficiently
Understand the benefits of using external data sources for data management, and equip yourself for the challenges of managing and sourcing external data.
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Data quality rules: the fuel your master data management runs on
The world of data quality rules offers a fascinating journey. Mine started when I realized how bad business partner data quality is at companies.
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Stay clear of tax hurdles: Why validating European VAT Numbers is key for your business
To qualify for the zero VAT rate when selling goods within the EU, you must obtain and verify your customer's VAT ID number and submit a proper EU Sales Listing. Here is why validation matters and how to stay compliant.
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Mastering Business Partners in SAP: First Time Right with Trusted Data
SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition, now offers standard functionality to integrate trusted external data sources into business partner creation, ensuring First Time Right master data in SAP.
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Master data cleansing made simple
Master data cleansing is like decluttering your digital closets - removing outdated, redundant customer and vendor master data and correcting the rest. Here is how to do it, and how CDQ makes it continuous.
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The (True) Cost of Data Daily Updates
A large business partner portfolio can generate 20,000 updates a day — far too many to review manually. This article shows how filtering, harmonization and CDQ's data quality rules automate up to 88% of the workload.
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Data harmonization: the inconspicuous but crucial basis for data management
Harmonization and data modeling may sound complex, but they are critical to a structured, streamlined approach to master data management, standardizing business partner data for consistency, quality, and integration.
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Put into master data perspective: Compliance
A proper master data governance is the fuel for success in nearly all processes of your company and protects you from making expensive mistakes — from credit management and KYC to sanctions compliance.
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Tackle SAP S/4HANA migration with high-quality business partner data
SAP requires migration to S/4HANA by 2027. High-quality, deduplicated, and validated business partner data is essential to get a clean start with the new system.
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